Public Dog (5)

Today was out and about Public Dog class.  It was in a small park and we used a rather narrow trail through the woods.

I knew right away that this was not going to be our most stellar class - Gimme just had no focus or attention at all.  The co-instructor kept giving me suggestions/advice for how to teach her LLW.  She kept ignoring my replies saying it wasn't a LLW issue, but rather a focus issue, so I basically ignored her. Our best 300 Pecks sequence was 5 steps, but for the most part we couldn't get more than 2!  When it came time for everyone to be playing leap-frog to come back up the trail -- I just used the PB GoToob to lure her past them so we were in the back again and then we declined to play. 

It was about that time that I suddenly had a duhhh-uhhhh moment.  All weekend Gimme has been Little Miss Clingy.  I spent the weekend getting my yard more or less caught up, so we didn't do any training and thus I didn't immediately trip to where her brain is.  Anyway, while walking it occurred to me and I did the math - she's having her false preggers.  So we'll have a week to ten days of less focus and then she'll be back to normal.  I find it interesting that I lose 7-10 days for the false pregnancy and 1 day during her season.

In any case, once I realized that - I simplified things greatly and finished the walk dawdling along and click/treating auto check-ins.  By the time we got to the trail head where everyone was taking a break, I had much more of her brain. 

After the break we all got together and played Doggie Tic Tac Toe.  They made a big grid on the ground and broke us into two teams of 3.  There was the "down" team and the "sit" team.  We started in the "down" team (which goes first because its supposed to be harder) and all three of our team got our pieces (one at a time) into their squares, doing the behavior with two cues or less.  Technically we won, but the co-instructor gave the other team another move and called it a draw. 

The next round we were in the "sit" team, starting second.  Susan and Tucker were first up and he just wouldn't sit.  So that had the other two up on us, but Gimme and I were able to cut them off.  Since it was a sit, I got us close to the board and then just heeled the last few steps into our square and stopped, so she sat.  Of course, then I had to get her up so I could prove that she knew how to sit on cue.  Anyway, our team was vindicated when we won this round.

I'm happy to say, despite her earlier lack of focus, Gimme was the only dog of the six that was able to do her sits and downs on the first cue each time.  Not that I'm competitive or anything like that... 

She's been being a lap dog ever since we got home...